I hate computers

Today I fought some hours with Ubuntu to get my network working again. It started with the idea to have the NAS no longer attached by WLAN (SLOOOOOOOOOOW) but via a cable (FAST). I clicked on "Network Configuration" in the menu which made all my networking disappear and broke everything. Then I started to configure stuff by hand, which worked for the WLAN card but not for the classical LAN card. For some reason after each reboot it went from ethx to ethx+1, making it to eth181 before I found the problem.

Not necessary to mention that I went half mad during the search for the problem...

In the end it turned out that some completely brainless moron decided it would be a nice idea to have a random MAC address assigned to the LAN card at each reboot (from the BIOS). For privacy enhancement and you cannot switch it off... So the magical automatic hardware stuff of Linux thought "Oh, a new card" and gave it a new number. FUNNY. VERY FUNNY.

Instead of developing computers which go faster and faster (and can drive you mad much faster than anything before), why not just develop something which works? Call me wimpy, but I don't want to spend nights in front of my computer just to get a stupid network card working, this is supposed to be the 21st century...

Procras^H^H^H Gaining Experience in GIS and Mapping

I bought a new mobile phone. My old Siemens SK65 started to annoy me by being generally shaky and having a flickering display (as you might have noticed I am not that into Flickring anymore...)

So I got a Nokia, it has WLAN, can do VOIP, has lots of other stuff with fancy abbreviations. And it can talk to a GPS via bluetooth. So I bought a bluetooth GPS mouse. I tried the Nokia Sports Tracker which is quite cool but cannot do a lot. It can do tracking though.

I then found AFTrack, which can do everything, from tracking to moving map. If you use a bitmap map, you need to calibrate it, which really sucks doing with the mobile's keypad and it is really slow. So I tried to find a better way...

AFTrack can read OziExplorer map files. OziExplorer can read GeoTIFF with a plugin (via Import Map->Import single DRG Map). So taking a scanned map, reading it in GRASS, marking coordinates in GRASS, saving as GeoTIFF, transfering to my Laptop (Windows...) to read it in OziExplorer and save as map-file. Then editing the map file by hand to convert from UTM to Latitude/Longitude using a web-based converter. Then saving it on the microSD card of my mobile, importing it in AFTrack and voilá, now I know where I am and find my way around Erlangen. Not that I didn't before...

(If you ask now why I needed GRASS, and did not use OziExplorer from start: I hoped not to have to use OziExlorer. And knowing a bit what a GIS does is also fine. And it can do a lot of warping around the map to get rid of distortions...)

Next Step: get the maps of the Virgen-Valley onto my mobile, so that I can get lost in the alps next week.